In telephone communication systems, call centers are often used for routing or pre-screening calls based on the caller's responses to automated prompts. Such prompt-response mechanisms are often time consuming since the caller must navigate through a large number of prompts before being routed to the desired call recipient or information database. Also, such mechanisms rely on the caller to properly follow the prompt commands. If the caller does not cooperate with the prompt commands, the call cannot be routed accurately. Similarly, call-screening mechanisms rely on cooperation by the caller in truthfully responding to the screening prompts. This makes it difficult for the caller and the recipient to accurately and efficiently route and screen calls.
Speech recognition systems have therefore been proposed to assist in the call routing process. However, such speech recognition systems have also relied on a prompt-response mechanism in which the caller must respond to predetermined prompts. For example, the system may request that the caller state the caller's name and/or state a predetermined word or sequence of words representing the subject matter of the call or the identity of the desired recipient. Again, these systems are effective only if the caller is truthful when responding to the predetermined prompts. Also, the speech recognition models that are used to determined the content of the speech must be able to accurately segment the content given a wide range in voice input characteristics for different callers. Such systems can therefore remain time consuming or inaccurate and can be easily circumvented by uncooperative callers.
Improved methods and apparatus are therefore desired for automatically pre-screening and routing incoming telephone calls based on voice characteristics.